


The Silent

by WinterDusk



Series: Have Tesseract, Will Travel [8]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Empathy, Gen, Insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23759044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterDusk/pseuds/WinterDusk
Summary: One empath.  Far too many million miles from planet-fall; seventy eight hours of transit; eight other Guardians.  One ship.It gets loud.
Relationships: Drax the Destroyer & Mantis, Ego the Living Planet & Mantis, Loki & Mantis (Marvel), Mantis & Nebula (Marvel)
Series: Have Tesseract, Will Travel [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1353133
Comments: 3
Kudos: 75





	The Silent

**Author's Note:**

> I hope that you’re all staying well!
> 
> The Coronavirus lockdown has left me wondering how Mantis must feel living in a crowded tin-can in space. It's not exactly ideal conditions for an empath!

She _left_ the Milano for good reason. And now she’s _back_ on the Milano for good reason. Reasons like ‘I’m lonely’ and ‘I miss them’ and ‘no one else makes me laugh until I snort through my nose’.

But the reasons that she left were really, equally good ones. Things like: ‘Thor is a swirling, acidic bath of self-hatred’ and ‘Peter is a desperate, hungry pit of frustrated devotion’ and ‘being near Rocket makes me want to blow things up’. Because her fellow Guardians are kind (in their own way) and they’re lovely (so much so that she wonders what they see in her) and they’re home (because there’s nowhere else that she can go; not even Knowhere). But they’re also a mess.

So she’s filled with more than a little trepidation when she sends the message asking them to come and collect her. Trepidation that turns into outright panic when she runs into their latest adoptee; an oh-so-cold creature weeping on the floor and flooding emotions _everywhere_ at fever pitch. Rage, betrayal, pain, doubt, exhaustion: all over the spectrum and washing away anything of the good. Anything of _Mantis_.

It got a little confusing after that. It often does, when it’s all been too much. When the feelings sweep away the reason.

But the newcomer calmed down, and Gamora was there, pretending to be stoic when all she was really feeling was murder and calculation and concern. But that faux-stoic facade Gamora brought with her; that had been just enough for Mantis to spin something functional out of. Something real. Enough for her to pretend to be rational and to-

And then the newcomer had been talking about shielding. Making promises that should sound like lies – Drax has explained lies to her; they seem to be a common folly among those who are soul-blind – save for the fact that s/he is suddenly muted. It feels like Mantis has been listening to the world through a howling, screaming migraine, and suddenly – in one direction only – someone has dimmed all the lights and turned down the music.

She still only boards the Milano because that’s what she’d decided to do before. Back when she was on her own, and her gut decisions belonged to no one else.

And maybe she should be demanding that the new one make her some shields or show her self-control – whatever it is that s/he claims that s/he’s selling – but Mantis just wants to lie down. That, and everyone’s panicking about a message that’s just come in. So Mantis takes her leave; she’ll deal with it all…. later.

Drax’s room is the closest place to peace she’s found in this too-close sensational kaleidoscope.

#

She wakes in the night and it’s… calmer.

Somewhere nearby she’s aware of Rocket, but his mind is a small, bright point of intensity and his emotions are pinned still under the weight of that. For a while she lies where she is, revelling in the peace. Her toes wriggle into the blanket covering her, sending back sensations of ‘warm’ and ‘comfort’ and, for a while, that is enough.

Then her stomach rumbles. Apparently she is hungry.

Rolling onto her side, she looks over to where Drax is sleeping, sprawled out on a reclining chair, head tilted back and mouth wide open, mid-snore. His breath is howling in and out of his body; a continual cycle of life almost vibrant enough to match his furiously focussed everyday existence. But, when she lets her hand drift to touch his, the feelings that rush over her are…

_She is alone. She is in pain. She is one that has failed; who has looked upon the eyes of those that she has loved and vowed to protect, and seen them flatten and film in death. She-_

She is Mantis, not Drax.

And – slowly – she is able to pull herself back. More than that, to press – gently – against Drax’s energy until he is, if not at peace, then at least running in a straight line through his past, rather than digging himself into deeper and deeper pits of misery.

Her stomach rumbles again. Time to get up.

Swinging her legs out of the bed, she takes a moment to check for vertigo. Doesn’t feel anything strange, so maybe she hasn’t slept for that long, nor let herself hunger into weakness. A quick stretch confirms that all seems to be working well. And so it’s with optimism that she leaves Drax’s cabin.

After Drax’s cabin, there is Groot’s. And Groot’s dreams are nothing to fear. But after _that_ there is the cabin assigned to Thor and _his-_

She doesn’t realise that she’s braced for onslaught until it fails to arrive. Her steps – planned to march mechanically past the pain within – falter in confusion. Is Thor away?

But his presence within is-

“Oh!” The new-comer. S/he’d been… Thor’s nest-mate? Hatch-sworn? Egg-adjacent? Clutch-twinned? What was the phrase that live-borns used?

Whoever s/he is, s/he’s having a good effect. In fact – Mantis presses close against the cabin door – everyone within seems to be sleeping soundly, locked in sensations of ‘peace’ and ‘life’ and teeth-gritting ‘never, ever, going to happen again’.

She’s smiling when she reaches the kitchen, and thinks that it’s pleasant to be optimistic. Better yet, thinks that, maybe, the hopefulness she’s feeling is hers.

#

The next morning she’s met by a slightly irate-looking ‘Loki’. ‘He’ snaps at her like Rocket does when something’s not going according to plan, but underneath she thinks he’s feeling guilty. It’s hard to be certain, because the sensations of darkness-and-muffled-music continue while he talks and talks and-

“How are you doing that?” Because it’s odd. Like always having heard the sea, then one day getting water in her ears, leaving her to catch only a strange, deep throbbing.

He blinks. Raises a wrist that is both slender and fine boned, and tugs at a lock of his hair. In it he’s wearing… Well, Drax would either call it a disastrous attempt at a mating signal, or a well-chosen sign of self-identification. She looks at the gizmo carefully, but can made no sense of it.

Curious, she reaches up to touch it. Loki startles, but doesn’t stop her.

The gizmo’s… not buzzing exactly. But it leaves her fingertips numb, and her antennae… hot / cold / sleepy / odd.

“I made one for you, too,” he says. Like it isn’t odd that he’d want to both hide his own emotions and then shield her empathy as well. Maybe it isn’t. Rocket says that plans should always be belt-and-braces and over-engineered. “I thought it might help you.”

#

It does not help.

Wearing that… thing… It’s like stumbling around drunk and blind. Like her nose cannot smell and her tongue cannot taste. She wears it for five hours only, nearly goes dizzy from the strangeness, then cuts off the charm, lock of hair and all, and asks Rocket to put it in the most secure and bomb-proof box he has available. She’ll take feeling Thor’s panic-attacks and Peter’s hidden bouts of morosity-bordering-on-weepy over _that_.

Not that she doesn’t feel guilty; Loki was clearly trying to help, and when next she sees him, she wonders if she’s meant to misdirect so that he isn’t upset that he couldn’t help.

But he notices immediately and simply nods on his way past, feelings too muffled to make sense of until-

Adrenalin is a painful kick in the gut.

Sometimes Mantis thinks that _this_ is the reason for her ‘gift’. That her people must have developed their shared emotional network – however exactly it functioned without driving them all insane – so that, in moment of threat, the warning would fly faster even than light.

Every other species seems to cope just fine without empathy.

But when she turns to look at whatever has so alarmed Loki, all that she sees is Nebula.

#

Nebula is… not like other people.

Mantis is aware that this is a tricky phrase. That being ‘not like others’ is both isolating and, strangely, can be a sought-after title by people desperate to prove to their oppressors that they’re special enough to be treated well.

But all phrases carry unintended meanings, and this particular phrase suits Gamora’s changeling-hatch-mate well.

They don’t look much like birds of a feather, but Gamora must be the reason that Nebula has remained. And so Mantis supposes that she should get used to having a cyborg crewmate. It’s just that… Nebula is empty.

Not empty in a dead way, of course. Every time that Mantis has met Nebula, she’s been brimming with emotions; feelings that swirl over, thick enough that Mantis doesn’t even need empathy to know them. There’s rage in her voice, and guilt in her actions, and pain in her eyes all too often. It’s clear that Nebula _is_ a being. That she lives and she thinks and she feels.

It’s just that Mantis can’t _feel_ Nebula _doing_ that feeling.

If Loki and his charm is like being in a room where someone has turned down the radio, then Nebula is like trying to hear a heartbeat through sound insulation half a mile thick, and which has then been wrapped in sheet metal, before being launched in to the soundless vacuum of space.

It’s… strange.

Drax always says that strange people are easier, because you don’t have to worry about the lies that they are hiding. But it’s occurring to Mantis that Drax is Drax and she is herself. What may be true for him is not necessarily so for her.

She avoids Nebula for the rest of the day.

#

Mantis wakes, late into the night, because the world is miserable and she needs to weep until she can drown in her own tears.

For a moment it’s almost impossible not to just do so. But then a hand, warm and unexpected, cups her jaw and, instead of being sad, she is concerned; maybe even alarmed.

Apparently she has woken Drax.

“Wake up. Stop crying and wake up.” Spoken as though futility is something she would _choose_ to feel.

It’s tempting to lie there, feeling Drax’s concern, pretending that the pain is gone. It’s not gone. “I will be back.” She pushes him away; maybe if she knows that there’s somewhere not-painful-feeling to return to, it will be easier to deal with the cords around her soul that are digging in and cutting her to the quick? Easier for her to help soothe that pain?

But, first, she has to find the source.

Not Drax. So Rocket, Thor, Loki, Gamora, Groot: she runs through her list of possible suspects. Picks a route to walk past their rooms.

Tonight it’s Rocket. That’s a change.

Resting her hand, her forehead, her antennae, against his door, she sends herself forwards. Reaches out with all that she is towards all that Rocket is and-

_Loneliness, futility, grief. Cages that trap her in pain; cages that only open to take her to worse pain. To poking and prodding and- The cages are cold and metal. Expect that sometimes they are warm, living wood, holding her in an embrace that she can’t escape from, until suddenly her bars shatter and she’s flung free into an endless sea of grief that is the worst pain of all and-_

“Sleep.” Rocket’s already asleep, but it’s not the pleasant kind. If she can just… “Sleep deeply.”

And he does.

“Do you do this often?”

Mantis has done nothing wrong; truly she hasn’t. So why is she staggering back from the doorway, guilty?

“Nebula. I didn’t know you were awake.” But then, that’s the way it is. Mantis never knows anything about Nebula other than what her eyes and ears tell her.

“I drew nightshift today.” Nebula’s arms cross over her chest and Mantis wishes she’d paid attention to this ‘body language’ that people are always talking about. Because she can’t remember whether that’s meant to indicate a need for self-comfort, or to make a statement of confidence, or whether it’s just somewhere comfortable to put one’s hands if one’s pockets are full. “It hardly a secret, what with being on the board in the common area.”

Mantis hasn’t really been paying attention to the roster board. “Oh. Um, that’s good, I guess.” Maybe she should check to see if her name is up there?

“Whatever. You didn’t answer me. Do you do this… psychic thing… often?” Nebula’s got an apple from somewhere; is taking a bite. That’s got to be a sign of nonchalance, right? Or is it an indication that she’s hungry, and planning to eat Mantis next?

“I’m not hurting anyone.” Quite the opposite. And if easing her crewmates also keeps her from going crazy? It’s still a good deed. “A good night’s sleep is important.”

Nebula rolls her eyes. “I wouldn’t know.”

This is probably the part where Mantis is meant to offer to try to help Nebula. She almost doesn’t. Nebula seems more metal than flesh some days; for that matter, Mantis has _met_ creatures of metal that resonate more in the _other way_ than Nebula does. But if everyone else on the ship has problems sleeping, then maybe Nebula does too…?

“I could just-” she reaches out to _try_ and-

A hand, apparently harder than the steel it’s comprised of, encircles Mantis’s wrist: Nebula; definitely Gamora’s nest-cohort where it counts. “No.”

“Right.” Mantis nods frantically, trying to pull her hand free. There’s something… strange in their interaction, and it’s only when she finds herself stumbling away, that Mantis realises she hadn’t expected Nebula to let her go. “I. I’m going to bed.”

She’s going to add something about Drax, though she’s not quite sure what that will be, but Nebula just nods curtly. “See that you do.” And Nebula turns on her heel, stalking away.

Mantis’s wrist is still hurting when she climbs in-between the sheets; an ache more present than the now-muted dreams of her shipmates. Pulling the bedding up, over her head, she wonders if she’ll fall asleep and whether the incident will leave a bruise.

#

She wakes late the next morning and would feel bad about it save that: one, Thor is sleeping later; two, Loki is _not_ sleeping later, and is apparently filling the ship with muted-but-not-silent tension; and three, she’s too full of relief that her hand is unmarred. Apparently Nebula hadn’t gripped her that hard after all.

“Do you think you could lull a strange species to sleep?” Is the question that greets her when she enters the communal area.

It’s tempting to answer Loki, but instead Mantis reminds herself that she needs to check the roster. Her name’s not on it. Is that…? Should she worry about that? “Should I be sitting watch?”

“Watch?” Loki’s eyes flicker over to the board. “No. Why? Can you fly the ship?”

Mantis has never thought about that before. “Maybe?” It can’t be that hard, can it? If everyone else can do it.

Loki’s name isn’t on the board either. Maybe he, too, can’t pilot the ship? Groot – also absent – certainly can’t. It seems like she’s found the pattern.

“Look. Strange species. How long do you need to spend around one before you can…” Apparently he’s serious about what he’s asking, for his voice goes on and on, talking about ‘frost giants’ and their size and their violence and-

“I sent a planet to sleep once.” Admittedly it had been a planet that she knew well. It still has to count, right?

Loki’s words falter. “A planet?”

“Ego.” She nods firmly. And if sometimes she’s sorry that Ego died; that the being that raised her, monster though he was, is no more and her purpose in life is now indistinct? No one needs to know that.

“Yes, I suppose you have. Still, if this works…”

“You want me to go back to Earth and send some people to sleep?” It seems worth double-checking. Loki keeps using words; they just don’t make any sense to Mantis. Rather she’s aware of Gamora’s irritation at finding her carton of bug-bug cereal unexpectedly finished. Clearly she doesn’t know that there’s another one behind Groot’s bucket of Potash Supplement. Mantis should go and make sure her crewmate’s day gets off to a good start, but Loki seems insistent.

Maybe she can make Loki talk faster? “Anything else you want to add?” These frost giants don’t sounds so bad.

“Anything else?” But Loki’s tone is suddenly slow and drawn out. He’s looking at her almost as carefully as she’s looking at him. Occasionally Rocket looks at her like this, when he thinks that she’s being ‘stupid’, so she’s expecting Loki to ask if she understands, or maybe why she needed to confirm anything in the first place.

Instead he continues making no sense: “Well, what do you want? As your return?”

She blinks carefully. Tries to dissect his words. From the galley, she can actually _hear_ Gamora banging about, temper clearly torn. Is Loki asking what Mantis would like them to do on the flight back from Earth? It doesn’t make any sense – why would _she_ get to choose that?

Then she remembers that Loki knows about charms and empathy and shielding, so presumably knows just how tiring all of this can be for her. So maybe he’s asking if she’d like a treat for the journey home? Something to pick her up?

“Oooh. Could we go to the Wakandan Plains and watch the sunset?” That had been lovely and peaceful and empty. And, weird as Loki is, if it’s just the two of them, then it won’t be too loud. Of course, Nebula would be quieter. But it’s Loki who wants to help her. “We could take cake.” Cake is always nice.

Loki’s face is as blank as his charm-muted emotions. “You want us to go on a _date_?”

A specific date? “The day after I send the giants to sleep.” Sometimes _straight_ after using her empathy strongly she’s too tired to relax, if that’s possible to imagine.

“Oh.” Loki runs a hand through his hair. “What about Drax?”

Drax? For a moment Nebula considers that Drax might be hurt when they meet the giants and need some care. Or that Drax might want to come along with them and see the rhinos again. That he might enjoy-

And then she reminds herself that Loki is asking about the type of ‘pick me up’ _she_ needs, and that Drax can be noisy. “No. He’s not coming.”

“Riiight.” Loki nods slowly. “I see. Um, good talk. I’ll definitely consider it.” And like that he’s gone, presumably to plan whatever it is that they need to do to overthrow the frost giants attacking Earth.

Well, he’s got his plan, and she should get back to hers. She looks again at the board. At the fact that her name isn’t on the shift roster. Wonders why everyone lets her get away without pulling her weight. Well, it’s time to change that.

“ _Peter!_ Did you steal my blasted bug-bugs?”

But first, she’d better find Gamora that cereal.

#

It shouldn’t be hard to learn how to pilot a ship. Not when one lives on said ship and also has plenty of time. Unfortunately, no matter who she tries throughout the day, Mantis’s conversations bear little fruit.

Take, for example, Peter: “My baby?” His face contorts into horror; his feelings even moreso. “No. Definitely not. You can start on some pleasure vessel next time we’re in a suitable port. Then, if that goes well, we can consider moving you on to _blar-blar-blar_.” He keeps talking, despite their conversation clearly being done.

Perhaps it’s an outcome she should have expected. He almost _bit_ Drax that time Drax bent one of the corridor panels when sparing with Thor. Maybe Peter wasn’t the best person to start with.

Maybe she should try Drax?

“Hahahahaha. You want to learn to pilot a vessel? Why? Our enemies will come to _us_ if we can’t go to them! And then we will _words-words-words_.”

It’s hard to feel dispirited with tears of hilarity rolling down her cheeks. Yet she does.

It doesn’t get better.

Gamora; with sharp suspicion: “Why are you asking _now_?”

Thor; complacent and distracted by worry: “Teach you? Sure. It’s not hard. You just hold the controls and she flies.”

Rocket; _irritated_ : “Not now. I’ve got less than a day to finish building these A-holes some sort of fire-based projectile to _cold-fire-burning-thing, switches-here, power-cell-there, too-much-technical-talk-everywhere_.”

She goes to Nebula last. It’s not like she knows the other woman well.

It takes time for Mantis to even _find_ her final option. Nebula’s not in the cockpit or in the common area or helping Rocket assemble trouble. In the end, Mantis has to resort to asking Groot where Nebula will be, and then wonders why she didn’t check there first; she must have walked past the sisters’ cabin a dozen times that morning.

It’s just that every time it had felt ‘empty’.

She knocks uncertainly, wondering if she should have brought a bribe. Maybe an apple? Maybe ten? It’s not like things can go worse than they have with the other Guardians. Can they? What if Nebula gets hold of her wrist again?

“What?” Not a promising start; Nebula hasn’t bothered opening the door.

Mantis seriously considers walking away. The cabin’s red ‘access’ button looks suddenly menacing.

But maybe that’s just her wicked laziness speaking? Maybe she doesn’t _want_ to help her crewmates and is deliberately finding excuses and-

Nebula had sounded really, rather angry.

Mantis carefully selects the blue button for the intercom. “I’m sorry. I can come back another time.” What if Nebula is _more_ angry at Mantis for disturbing her for no reason? She’s here, away from everyone else, in her own cabin. So clearly she must want peace? Right? “Or I could just wait and-”

The door hisses open, accessed from within. Nebula is revealed, blaster and oil-rag in hand. “What do you want?”

Angry. Definitely angry.

“Um.”

How does everyone else function like this?

“What. Do. You. Want?”

At that moment? Mostly just to scurry away. But Mantis has her mission. Later it might involve knocking out giants, but for now there’s a bigger problem in her way. And that’s that she’s a lazy bug: not pulling her weight around her friends.

Mantis clenches her fists, and tells herself that Nebula can’t be any more furious and willing to bite her than she’s been in the past. That she’s not hurt Mantis yet. That she’s Mantis’s final hope. “I want to learn how to pilot the ship.”

#

The cabin Nebula and Gamora share is dim. What low lighting it does have shows a space fiercely divided; even the walls show scars from previous partitioning attempts. Gingerly, Mantis steps inside, trying not to jump as the door whooshes shut behind her.

On the cabin’s far wall, there’s a series of flashing lights and dials. Mantis had forgotten this used to be the captain’s quarters. That the ship’s backup systems were all routed into this space. “Do you ever…?” But she can’t quite bring herself to ask if either Nebula or Gamora have ever interfered with the Milano’s operation.

“You should sit here.” There’s a stool bolted below the control panel. In one aggressive move, Nebula has swept it clear of clothes. “Watch that.” She nods to the console. “Don’t touch anything.”

Mantis wonders whether this includes the knife rocking precariously on the tiny space in front of the panel. She thinks it might be Gamora’s. Presumably Gamora hadn’t found anywhere more suitable to leave it.

She sits, mostly because she’s not certain what Nebula will do if she refuses. In the dark, all of the screens are bright enough to make Mantis’s eyes sting. She twists to look up at Nebula; knows that her antennae are twining, uncertain, as they search for information they cannot provide. “What do I do now?” She’s not even certain what, exactly, she’s looking at. “Are you going to give me lessons and-”

Nebula’s already turned her back. Is throwing things about. Her elbow keeps clicking, and it looks like there’s a tube leaking… something. Is that painful?

She straightens up before Mantis can decide whether she’s allowed to ask about the arm.

“Here.” A pad is jabbed in her direction. “Start reading at section one.”

Reading.

Just thinking about it Mantis feels her antennae start to wilt. “Oh. Okay.” Not that Nebula has waited around for her compliance.

For a moment Mantis just looks at the device. At the screens. At all of the lights and the blinking and- Maybe she should just accept that, even more than Groot and Loki, she’s going to be deadweight for the crew. And people at least seem to think that Groot and Loki are cute. Like puppies.

No! She won’t accept defeat! It’s not that she _can’t_ read. She switches on the device. Reading’s fine. It’s the _focussing_ that tends to go badly; the brilliant distraction of everyone else’s emotions snagging and tearing at her awareness; keeping her in the moment and not in the-

_This vessel is an M-class. Congratulations on your purchase of one of the most versatile of our current fleet! Within the following document you will find key information relating to: daily maintenance routines; periodic maintenance routines; trouble-shooting (and shooting trouble!); and, finally, standard flight procedures (SFPs). (NB, the inclusion of SFPs by the manufacturer does not indicate an admission of responsibility in the event of a being attempting flight of said vessel without first undertaking an appropriate training and evaluation program (TEP) as specified by their local star system’s legislation.)_

Mantis hits the end of the paragraph and blinks.

Feels her eyes slide to Nebula. Nebula is sitting on her bunk, far from Mantis and near to the door. She is currently doing something involving tweezers to a disassembled blaster. The weapon looks like it might, more usually, be part of her arm. She does not return Mantis’s look.

Mantis stares back at the pad in her hands. Has it flick to a random document location.

_Upon isolation of the coolant system from the oxygen scrubber, a 7a spanner (Xandarian Standard) can be used to loosen the three restraining bands revealed (torque to be kept below 71 kL). After, the oxygen scrubber may be displaced to the right, granting access to the secondary filtration unit._

Mantis has no idea what the secondary filtration unit is for; that different system governments used different standards for spanners; or what type of unit a kL is. What she _does_ know is that she can’t remember the last time she’s read to the end of a paragraph and had it feel so… unfragmented.

It’s like she can _see_ that there are three things stacked on top of one another: a filter, a scrubber and a coolant system. And, even if she doesn’t know anything about what they look like, she can _understand_ that somewhere in the ship they exist and that someone – most likely Peter or Rocket – has been performing maintenance on these systems.

That, if she keeps on reading, she’ll learn _more_ about how everything relates to everything else in the ship.

“Normally it moves around.” The text; her thoughts – she’s never exactly certain which one it is.

“What?” Nebula hasn’t put aside her project. But now she’s giving Mantis her attention.

It’s just that, right now, Mantis doesn’t want _anyone’s_ attention. Hadn’t meant to whisper. Doesn’t want to talk. Because, for the first time since Ego, there’s nothing around shattering her focus and confusing Mantis about who she is and what she’s doing.

She can actually _concentrate_.

“Nothing. Nothing.” She flicks through the document. Can’t help – despite her earlier resolution to be quiet – muttering, “This is going to take _ages_ to read.” Far, far longer than the remnants of the trek back to Earth.

Nebula shrugs. “Come back whenever you like.” She picks up her tools again. “So long as Gamora doesn’t say otherwise.”

Which is nice and all. But forget coming back, Mantis isn’t planning on _leaving_ yet.

#

In the end she doesn’t move until her stomach is cramping, desperate for food, and her eyes are gritty with exhaustion. She still doesn’t know how to pilot the Milano. For that matter, the manual has left her not certain she knows how to correctly operate the _shower_.

But it’s a _start_.

Everything aches when she tries to stand. “Oww.”

Nebula’s still doing something mechanical to something else. She doesn’t seem at all bothered by their long stillness when she turns to Mantis. “That maybe not been the best choice for the night before an epic battle.”

That Nebula appears to have partly disassembled herself the night before an epic battle is not the point here. For Nebula’s not wrong.

“I can still make people sleep.” So long as she doesn’t fall asleep herself. Maybe some breakfast will help perk her up? “You’ll see.”

She leaves the cabin only to enter a screamingly loud, chaotic, common room. She seriously considers retreating; to searching Nebula’s room for crumbs. Or apple cores.

What had she come in here for?

 _Pain, distress, guilt._ The vortex of Thor’s feelings snatch at her, pinning her attention just as surely as his own is fixed.

For, in the view screen, there hangs a small blue planet.

Mantis stops, the pandemonium of her crewmates swirling around her, unable to take her tired eyes away.

For a moment the Earth doesn’t look all that different to the last time she was here. There’s the blue bits and the browny-green bits. The sparkling-in-the-dark bits. The swirling trails of clouds. Then she looks harder, like she’s paying attention to one of those ‘spot the difference’ games they’d tried with Groot when he was younger.

“Is it me, or does it look like there’s more white at the poles?”

**Author's Note:**

> I know that Mantis should be a touch-empath; but let’s just pretend that the final battle, and all the chaos around it, has triggered her powers into a greater awakening ;)


End file.
